Tokyo fuhrer Shintaro Ishihara has paid his annual respects to Japanese war criminals at Yasukuni, saying Japan’s current government “is not Japanese” for choosing to stay away.

Talking to the media, he was characteristically outspoken:

[The DPJ cabinet aren’t visiting to pay their respects?]

“Shouldn’t Japanese pay their respects? That lot aren’t Japanese!”

Ishihara is of course a long time visitor to the shrine.

Yasukuni Shrine enshrines the souls of Japan’s 2,466,532 pre-1951 war dead; the major issue surrounding political visits to the shrine is the fact that in 1978 the souls of 14 Class A war criminals were explicitly enshrined as “martyrs.”

Other dubious fixtures at the shrine include a statue celebrating the sacrifice of kamikaze pilots, a statue honouring an Indian war crimes tribunal judge who insisted the USA was responsible for the war, and a revisionist war museum glorifying Japan’s attempt to “liberate” Asia.

The actual content of the shrine is determined by its own religious administration and various private groups. Due to the constitutional protection of freedom of religion and the post-war separation of Shinto and state, it is said to be impossible to compel the shrine’s administration to remove the war criminals.

In the eyes of critics, political visits to a shrine which goes to great lengths to honour fascists and mass murderers constitute a celebration of same, and since 1978 even the emperor has refused to visit the shrine out of concern over the enshrinement of war criminals (although he does despatch emissaries).

Since 1978, visits by politicians have taken on a strong foreign policy dimension, with Sino-Japanese relations ostensibly heavily influenced by whether an administration conducts visits.

PM Kan and his cabinet refrained from visiting Yasukuni at all, which can either be interpreted as a harmless diplomatic gesture of contrition to their overly sensitive Asian neighbours, or a slavish display of the subservient foreign policy they have become notorious for.

People like Ishihara, they don't care. They take, they maim and they trample over everything else as long as it serves them. His actions so far are in perfect accordance of what constitutes the mindset of despots.
Sure, you can downplay it all by saying that it's "only" pieces of entertainment and various weak groupings of society that he's targeting.
People like him are dangerous. They attract a lot of blind following and not because of real conviction. He's playing those weak-ass government fools and the ignorant masses because he knows that they are too afraid to step up.
Why do you think that it's always the minorties that are targeted by such crazy lunatics? It's because they rarely fight back. People like him NEED weak scapegoats. Look at Sankaku. We have lots of mindless Ishihara supporters here. For every troll there are two who actually do support that man.

I can see why many people do not veil their hostility towards that man. In fact, a lot of histories darkest chapters would have stayed unwritten if certain figureheads would have vanished sooner than later.

He wants a world where rape is allowed to flourish naturally-where men (and sometimes women) are free to rape whoever they please and whenever they please without being judged. Just like the good lord intended them to.

but killing him (at least at the hands of an otaku) is exactly what he wants. Think about it: such a killing would only be refueling the negative public image of otaku that festered since the incidents with Tsutomu Miyazaki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Miyazaki), and god knows the son of a bitch wouldn't mind sacrificing himself to accomplish this. Even if he is a god damn nutjob, someone willing to murder over 2D isn't gonna look good for anybody, and will only give those who like 2D a bad name.

Sad as it is to say, we can only hope nature (or a rival politician or somebody with absolutely no ties to otaku subculture) manages to kill him off for us. Or, we can hope that Japan's voting population actually grows a brain and doesn't vote him back into power at some point (if Ishihara himself doesn't die soon, the elderly population that continually elects him will).

but what are the odds that future generations of elderly will still maintain his rightist values? As they die off, at some point they're bound to get overtaken by a population that ISN'T stuck in the post-war remodeling period.

I think that will just boost the number of people visiting the shrine... imagine legions of otakus as well as regular citizens who were forced to accept his self-restraint BS coming there just to pee and dump on his memorial.

"Japan's war crimes are petty offenses compared to the offenses of the USA." hahahahaha ha ha sure bro...whatever you say. Give me some examples of crimes against humanity committed by the USA during the Second World War. Any? Even the known crimes USA has committed to this day cannot compare to the crimes committed by Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany in the past.
The USA has waterboarding, humiliation through sodomy, administration of STD's to prisoners in Guantanamo, JDAMs into civilian complexes, agent orange, nuclear irradiated survivors, rape, beat downs, and execution.
If you consider these acts to be worse than what the Japanese did in WWII alone then that's your own fucked up mentality.

That said, I don't have to go to Wikipedia to find evidence of the atrocities committed by Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany, it just happens to be the most convenient. Go visit your local library or talk to a history teacher. THE MOAR YOU KNOW*

As far as i know, pre-WW2 japan was not a signatory of the geneva conventions. They applied their concept of bushido to prisoners and invaded populace which was wrong, but it is just as wrong to judge them by our standards. However allot of those people were pretty scummy even by ultra right wing bushido standards.

Agreed. All the chinks and gooks are just too unreasonable about this. Just because some people died for a cause that was lost doesn't mean their lives are worthless and people should be BANNED from remembering them at all.